In the manufacture of products, such as, vehicles, aircraft, large scale office equipment, copy machines, computers, and other complex apparatus, the usual practice is to manufacture components at a variety of locations, ship such components to an assembly site and assemble the components together to comprise the end product. Components being shipped from the same manufacturing site are bulk packaged for shipment in containers that offer component protection during shipment. The components are removed from their containers at the assembly site, inspected for quality and are inventoried until they are assembled together with other components. The handling of components during this process is highly repetitive and to some extent, wasteful, with both quality control procedures and inspections, as well as loading, unloading, strapping, being performed in repetitive steps between the manufacture of components and eventual use. With respect to larger and more complex products, inventory alone is troublesome with many different part numbers and many different components needed to be consumed in particular sequences during assemblies of the products. With respect to components such as wiring harnesses, used for products such as computers, the problem is aggravated by the difficulty of handling the harnesses, typically made of flexible wire or cable, with fragile connectors on one or both ends, and with the need to distinguish different harnesses appearing similar to one another.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved packaging system and method of handling components from a component supplier to the factory floor and use of such components in manufacturing products. It is a further object to provide a packaging system and method that is of improved efficiency in the handling of components, including initial loading in packages for shipment, inventorying, and protection and organization of such components on the factory floor. It is yet a further object to provide an improved system and method of organizing components for use employing the same packages used by a component supplier for the multiple uses of inventory, shipment, and use on the factory floor. It is a specific object of the invention to provide a package that organizes components for use on a factory floor while protecting such components during initial handling, shipment, and subsequent inventory. It is a further object to provide a package that is of low cost to manufacture, allowing the organization of multiple components according to their sequential consumption in assembling a particular apparatus of manufacture.